


The boy on the train

by TheArrow



Series: The Problem With Nargles (1995, Luna's 4th Year) [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Kindred Spirits, Loneliness, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 04:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13356678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArrow/pseuds/TheArrow
Summary: “She does not need to let her gaze drift to the boy’s forehead, she does not need the boy to brush his dark hair aside for her to know that there is a peculiar scar hidden away there. She likes the idea of a scar hidden underneath messy hair. But under that messy, unkept hair he is just another adolescent boy on the train. An adolescent boy that she is making uncomfortable with her staring. She can tell.”Luna meets Harry for the first time. September 1995, The Hogwarts Express. Character study.





	The boy on the train

**Author's Note:**

> Exercise to flesh out Luna and write from her perspective in a believable way. Dialogue will seem familiar as it is lifted straight from Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix.

There is a boy on the train.

To be somewhat more precise, there are many boys on this particular train. There’s nothing noteworthy about this, as this is the famous Hogwarts Express itself, fulfilling its traditional purpose of bringing schoolchildren to Northern Scotland in time for the start of the school term.

But there is a particular boy on the train, his head and shoulders visible just behind a tentative but bright-eyed Ginny Weasley. His face is pale and the skin around his eyes is shadowed, like he hasn’t slept properly in weeks. He looks like he’s expecting something unpleasant to happen as he hovers — no, not hovers, too much weighs down this boy for him to hover — as he stands behind Ginny Weasley at the threshold of the train compartment. There is a crease in his brow between his eyebrows. He looks briefly between Ginny Weasley and herself, and holds her gaze, his green eyes blinking owlishly behind old, crooked Muggle spectacles. She does not need to let her gaze drift to the boy’s forehead, she does not need the boy to brush his dark hair aside for her to know that there is a peculiar scar hidden away there. She likes the idea of a scar hidden underneath messy hair. But under that messy, unkept hair he is just another adolescent boy on the train.

An adolescent boy that she is making uncomfortable with her staring. She can tell.

Ginny has just said something. Something about sitting down, most likely, but she has already forgotten. Or she wasn't paying attention in the first place. She looks at the three of them — seeing a taller dark-haired student squirming ever so slightly behind the pair — and nods in agreement, bringing her gaze back to rest on the bespectacled boy.

“Thanks,” Ginny relaxes into a grateful smile, shuffling into the compartment and gathering her luggage to stow away for the journey. The two others shuffle in after her as well, putting away their things and two caged owl in the racks above the seats. She holds her breath, wondering if, if—

The bespectacled boy sits down directly in front of her, next to the window. Ginny and the other one take their seats as well. She exhales, but soft enough that she hopes no one hears.

“Had a good summer, Luna?” Ginny asks her, though the questions seems quite faraway.

“Yes,” Luna breathes, speaking for the first time. She can feel something in her chest tightening as she observes him. She doesn’t — can’t, not quite yet — stop staring, however.

She guesses, by the way Harry shifts in his seat and avoids her gaze, that he is perturbed by her staring. Yes, just another adolescent boy on the train. “Yes, it was quite enjoyable, you know. You’re Harry Potter.”

The boy was expecting that, she thinks.

“I know I am,” Harry responds, voice even. The other boy in the compartment badly stifles a chuckle, and she turns to look at him. She tightens her grip on her new copy of latest issue of The Quibbler. Her father had given her the latest copy so that she would have something fresh to read on the train.

“And I don’t know who you are,” Luna speaks, careful to keep her voice free of any particular inflection.

“I’m nobody,” Neville answers.

Ginny scoffs at that, and contradicts him swiftly: “No you’re not. Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood. Luna’s in my year, but in Ravenclaw.”

Luna surmises that Longbottom is a Gryffindor in Harry’s year, so just a year above them.

She looks at the two older boys, who are both looking at her somewhat expectantly. “ _Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure_ ,” Luna rhymes in a singsong voice in response to Ginny’s comment about her placement in the blue Hogwarts House. Though, once she says it aloud, she suddenly feels intolerably silly, singing at these two older boys, and so she decides to raise her copy of The Quibble up higher, to hide her face. She can hear Ginny Weasley stifling a giggle and is surprised when it causes a sharp sting to prickle at the corner of her eyes. First Longbottom, then Weasley. She has lost the habit, she surmises, of staying calm when others are laughing at something she says or does. A summer with Father, though wonderful, has caused her to lower her guard. She wants to look at Harry Potter again, but counters that impulse.

She does not feel like reading, though from time to time she feigns turning the pages. Reading upside down is not terribly hard, it’s a little bit like reading mirror language, all it really takes to master is a bit of practice and some determination. This particular article on ancient runes also impresses the importance of looking at the runes upside down in order for them to divulge their most hidden secrets. But with this particular boy sitting just across from her, she finds no interest in immersing herself in reading. Since she has enough self-control, somehow, to not peek over the top of the Quibbler to look at him some more, her eyes slide to her right to observe to the rapidly changing scenery out the window.

Sometimes, through the clouds, she sees immense shafts of light illuminating patches of field and mountainside in the distance. She remembers her mother for a brief moment, who called those immense beams of sunlight _angel fingers_ …

“It’s really, really rare!” She hears Neville Longbottom to her left explaining excitedly to his housemates the odd-looking plant his aunt has given him for his birthday. “I don’t even know if there’s one in the greenhouses of Hogwarts, even. I can’t wait to show it to Professor Sprout. My Great Uncle Algie got it for me in Assyria. I’m going to see if I can breed from it.”

“Does it, er, _do_ anything?” Harry Potter asks Neville Longbottom skeptically. Curious, Luna inches her magazine a fraction of an inch lower, which allows her to surreptitiously watch the boys’ conversation.

“Loads of stuff! It’s got an amazing defensive mechanism.” Neville says excitedly, dumping a great old toad onto Harry’s lap. “Here, hold Trevor for me…”

As Neville starts tearing through his schoolbag with one free hand, his other hand holds up the pulsating, spherical-cactus-looking plant for them all to examine. Luna thinks it looks quite strange. Harry Potter spares a brief glance back at Luna as he wrestles with Neville’s unruly toad Trevor. She resists the urge to hide again behind her magazine, too curious about the plant itself and the boy sitting across from her.

She must have been distracted by said boy because she does not notice how Neville provokes his plant into spraying an odorous, slimy green substance all over their compartment. Luna crinkles her nose at the powerful pungent smell coming from the goo coating her hands, smelling rather like sewer water and dung. Thankfully, the Quibbler has kept most of it from touching her face directly, but she disappointedly asserts that this copy is rather ruined, the goo melting through the pages.

“S—sorry,” choked out Neville, “I haven’t tried that before…didn’t realise it would be quite so…don’t worry, though, Stinksap’s not poisonous…”

Harry spits out a mouthful of the stuff onto the compartment floor just as the door slides open. Luna recognises the older Ravenclaw student immediately, as Cho Chang is not only well-known within their House but also well-known throughout the school as she is the Ravenclaw Quidditch team’s talented and also very attractive Seeker.

“Oh…hello, Harry,” she greets them, “Um…Bad time?”

Luna is not often privy to the gossip within her House, but the whole school last year had been absolutely buzzing about anything regarding the school Champions. She’d heard more than she truly needed to know about the developing romance between Cedric Diggory and Cho Chang, so she couldn’t have missed that bit of social news unless she’d really tried. She looks at Harry Potter then, as he unsuccessfully tries to wipe some of the Stinksap from his face and off his glasses.

Luna looks down briefly at the ruined copy of The Quibbler she still holds in her hands.

“Oh, hi,” Harry answers the other Ravenclaw student, and Luna notices immediately how much brighter his voice is.

Cho Chang has always had that effect on boys.

“Um…” Cho says, lingering at the door, “Well I’d just thought I’d say hello. Bye then.”

There’s a tense silence after Cho leaves, until: “Never mind, look, we can easily get rid of all this,” Ginny scoffs as she pulls out her wand, “Scourgify!”

Though Ginny’s magic is thorough, and the spell banishes the Stinksap and almost all of the smell from the compartment, Luna can tell that her copy of the Quibbler feels a little more brittle in her hands as she flips through the pages.

  
Luna does not speak again for a long while, left alone with her thoughts for well over an hour. There’s a tightness in her chest that lingers in the presence of the three Gryffindors, so she turns away from them and keeps her nose buried in her reading, sometimes pausing to observe the passing scenery outside the window.

Harry Potter does not look at her again in that time. Luna decides that this is a relief.

Eventually two other Gryffindors — the new fifth year prefects from that House — join the compartment, and Luna recognises Ginny’s older brother Ron immediately.

She’s used to being left alone on the Hogwarts Express and at Hogwarts, but there’s something about sitting amongst these friends that causes her heart to balloon and contract at the same time. She finds it funny that though Ginny Weasley had asked for her permission to sit in this compartment at first, it now feels like the space now belongs firmly to these Gryffindors, with Luna feeling like the intruder. She allows herself to pretend that she has friends while listening to Hermione Granger’s exasperation and Ronald Weasley’s unsophisticated but honest sense of humour.

“I’ll make Goyle do lines, it’ll kill him, he hates writing,” Ron says with a large grin, facing Hermione and the others as he finishes chewing on a chocolate frog. Impersonating the Slytherin bully, Ron screws up his face into a twisted grimace and grunts out, miming a student writing lines: “I…must…not…look…like…a…baboon’s…backside…”

Luna, who has had more unpleasant run-ins with Malfoy and the rest of the Slytherin bullies than she can count, feels a buoyancy in her chest and can’t help the loud, uncontrollable laughter from escaping her at Ron’s antics. She’s caught up in a fantasy that these boisterous Gryffindors are her friends, and this friendship is a balm against the cruelty of the Slytherins and all those who call her “Loony” and cast spells that make her trip over her own feet in the corridors at school. She also thinks of Goyle writing lines, of how he sometimes does look like a baboon’s backside, his face pink and rather engorged.

She hiccups a little through giggles, eyes tearing up a little, and tells the Gryffindors, who are staring at her — they probably forgot that she was there — “That was funny!”

When the Gryffindors continue to chuckle along with her, and Luna allows herself to feel that they are not laughing at her but with her.

She is distracted by Harry Potter once again, when he reaches quickly to pick up the copy of The Quibbler she’d let slip onto the compartment floor.

“Can I have a look at this?” Harry asks her.

It is the first time those green eyes sparkle whilst looking in her direction. Perhaps it is a leftover of all that laughter, but she feels suddenly important. Included. Seen.

She nods, still trying to catch her breath.

Harry takes a little bit of time flipping through the articles in the magazine, skimming quickly through the articles as the rest of the Gryffindors in the compartment sit in comfortable silence. Eventually Ron Weasley breaks it by asking: “Anything good in there?”

“Of course not.” Hermione exclaims in a shrill, exasperated voice. “The Quibbler is rubbish. Everyone knows that.”

Luna feels her heart sink, dispelling with it any lingering lightweight feelings conjured by laughing at Weasley’s joke, or from Harry looking at her father’s work with eagerness.

“Excuse me,” she hears herself say, barely able to look at any of the Gryffindors, “My father is the editor.”

She doesn’t listen to Hermione’s embarrassed sputtering. Instead she leans forward and snatches back the magazine from Harry’s grasp, muttering: “I’ll have it back, thank you.”

She avoids Harry’s green gaze until she is safely back behind the magazine, hiding the few tears threatening to pour.

The compartment door opens for a third time, and this time Luna does not look. She wonders if Cho Chang has returned, until she hears Harry Potter irritably asking the visitors what they want.

It’s Malfoy’s oily voice that answers, sending shivers up Luna’s spine. She began disliking Malfoy in her first year, learning that he was one of the worst bullies to avoid at Hogwarts.

“You see, I, unlike you, have been made a prefect,” Draco preens like a blonde rooster over the Gryffindors, “which means that I, unlike you, have the power to hand out punishments.”  
Harry, completely unimpressed, responds in a bored tone: “Yeah, but you, unlike me, are a git, so get out and leave us alone.”

Luna dares look over the top of her magazine, once more fixing Harry Potter with an even gaze. How often has she wished that she could have the kind of bravery that is unimpressed by bullying and gratuitous displays of power? She thinks back to last year’s Triwizard Tournament, and remembers quite clearly watching Harry Potter facing down the Hungarian Horntail. She thinks on how many bets had been made that very same morning by the students about Harry Potter’s imminent, timely, and completely expected death.

Draco Malfoy doesn’t have much on a Hungarian Horntail even if he is a prefect, Luna muses as finally the Slytherin gang bores of posturing and leaves the compartment.

She returns to reading The Quibbler’s article on runes, but notices that the boy sitting across from her, resting his forehead against the glass of the train window, looks dejected. He has the bravery to call a Slytherin prefect-bully a git, but something is bothering him.

The others chat amongst each themselves. Ron is eating again. Ginny, Hermione and Neville are discussing their upcoming classes. Harry keeps silent, staring out the window.

Luna wonders what it must be like to have friends but remain apart.


End file.
